Baseball: Let’s not quibble; Dustin Pedroia worth the money

Considering that a box seat in Boston costs $130 and a box seat in Pawtucket costs $12, the contract that the Red Sox and Dustin Pedroia agreed upon last week seems like a bargain.

Baseball has never been about value. If it had been, PawSox tickets would cost, what, 75 percent of Red Sox tickets? Isn’t that about as good as Triple-A baseball is compared to the majors?

If eight years and $110 million sounds like a lot of money for a player who will be 37 when the deal ends, it probably is. This is a player, though, who was paid $1,543,000 less than Alex Cora the year he was voted the Most Valuable Player in the American League.

For Pedroia’s 2008 performance, $457,000 wasn’t nearly enough. If he retires when this contract expires, Pedroia will have made $140 million for 15 years of service, an average of a little more than $9 million a year.

That sounds reasonable for a player of his caliber.

What is sort of unique about this move by the Red Sox is that they are giving Pedroia an early “Thank You” contract. Curt Schilling got one in 2008, being paid $8 million for not throwing a pitch. Being part of 2004 and 2007 had a lot to do with that.

Jim Rice and Bob Stanley both got “thank yous” at the end of their careers, but Mo Vaughn didn’t get one when he was Pedroia’s age, nor did Roger Clemens. Neither did Nomar Garciaparra, the type of “face of the franchise” player Pedroia has become, and the Red Sox must be glad he did not.

Not many players, even the great ones, retire on their own terms. For the Red Sox, Ted Williams and Carl Yastrzemski both did. More recently, Jason Varitek and Tim Wakefield went home to standing ovations.

How teams treat their signature players and how welcome they make their former players feel is an intangible. The best organizations excel at it. It is the mark of a winner. For a long time, the Sox were not really good at it. They are getting better, and Pedroia’s deal — even though it is probably a bit too much money for a little too long — is another step in that direction.

Answers.

1. He holds the Red Sox career record for most innings pitched as a reliever.

2. The last Red Sox player to start at six positions in the same season.

3. He has the most career losses in major league action among right-handed pitchers currently on a major league roster.

Questions below.

The PED — performance-enhancing drugs — issue will probably never go away no matter how sophisticated testing becomes simply because there is so much money to be made by breaking the rules. However, it’s like car theft. It used to be that the thieves could always find a way to outsmart the technology, and some still can, but not as many.

So, it’s worth the effort.

There are a couple of troubling things about the Ryan Braun affair beyond his lying, if that wasn’t enough. One is that he has not really apologized. His exact words were, “I wish to apologize to anyone I may have disappointed.”

Not good enough — just say you were wrong and you apologize. You disappointed everyone, and the ones you didn’t disappoint don’t matter.

Also, in the future, baseball should make the offenders “allocute,” the legal term for a full and complete confession with no questions left unanswered.

True — the Red Sox’ current skid is a result of their seeing excellent pitching almost on a nightly basis. Also true — that’s exactly what they will see in the playoffs, if they qualify. … Baseball should simply retire the American League Manager of the Year award and give it permanently to Joe Maddon. OK, the Rays have great pitching and their player development people deserve a lot of the credit, but every year there is another example of a player, or players, who are better with the Rays than they ever have been anywhere else. Two ex-Red Sox come right to mind — Casey Kotchman and, this year, James Loney. … As the trade deadline approaches, suggestions are made that the Sox have such an abundance of talent in the minors that they can afford to trade prospects. False — abundance has a way of turning into shortage unexpectedly. The Bronson Arroyo trade before the 2006 season — Boston had too much starting pitching, it was said — is one example. By the way, Arroyo has thrown 14 complete games for the Reds since that deal; as a team, the Red Sox have 20 in the same period of time. … The Pawtucket Red Sox are home through Friday. A personal favorite among the prospects there, even though he is not listed as a Top 20 guy, is outfielder Alex Hassan, a native Bay Stater, who is hitting .333 in 35 games. … Red Sox manager John Farrell was right on Friday night when he argued that Baltimore’s Henry Urrutia should have been called out for running down the inside of the baseline on John Lackey’s throwing error in the sixth. However, there is no more blatant and consistent offender of that rule than Pedroia, so the Sox are better off in the long run if umpires continue to ignore it. … You would not find much support around the baseball world for holding a benefit for John Henry and partners, but the Sox continue to take a pretty substantial hit in the checking account as the season progresses. There are more sellouts than in the spring, but the team is still way behind at the box office. The Red Sox are down 180,211 fans from this time in 2012, which figures out to be about $13.5 million at an average of $75 a ticket. From this time in 2009, the team’s best-ever year at the gate, attendance is off by 191,683.

Reliever Alejandro Pena is a pitching coach with the Dodgers’ team in the Dominican Summer League; Izzy Alcantara, the Alfredo Aceves of Jimy Williams’ managerial career, is the hitting coach for the Marlins’ team in the DSL; and former Boston pitcher and pitching coach Al Nipper is a coach in the Tigers’ farm system.

The Lancaster Barnstormers of the independent Atlantic League have three former Sox in uniform. Butch Hobson is the manager, lefty Lenny DiNardo is one of the starting pitchers and Gustavo Molina is on the roster as a catcher.

David Ross is still a ways from returning to the lineup, and his injury is an example of why today’s disabled lists are so much bigger than they were a generation ago. A generation ago, Ross would not have been on the DL.

“I’ve probably had a concussion before this,” he said. “It used to be that if you had one, you played. You felt lousy, you played, you had a lousy year and that’s all anyone thought it was — a lousy year.”

Disabled list records from the past are spotty and unofficial, but ones available for the Red Sox show that from 1966 through 2011, only two Boston players had been on the DL with concussions. They were Doug Griffin in 1974 after being beaned by Nolan Ryan and John Valentin in 1999, also after a beaning.

Tony Conigliaro undoubtedly had a concussion in 1967 after being hit in the face by Jack Hamilton’s fastball, but the official diagnosis was a broken cheekbone. In any case, after two concussions diagnoses in 45 years, there have been three in the last two — Ryan Sweeney in 2012 and Ross and Stephen Drew this year.

1. Who is Bob Stanley? Stanley threw 1,159 innings worth of relief in a Red Sox uniform. Nobody else is within a light year of that.

2. Who is Pedro Ciriaco? In a little more than a half-season of play in 2012, Ciriaco started at second base, shortstop, third base, left field, center field and designated hitter.

3. Who is Ryan Dempster? With Derek Lowe’s career over, Dempster’s 132 career losses are the most among active right-handers. Lefties Andy Pettitte, Mark Buehrle and Barry Zito all have more than Dempster.

Contact Bill Ballou at wballou@telegram.com.

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